MLC tickets: Karnataka Congress general secretary calls out party for ‘patriarchy’

Karnataka Congress general secretary Kavitha Reddy on Monday called out her party for “patriarchy” and “injustice” towards women while picking candidates for the June 3 Legislative Council elections.

Reddy and several other women Congress leaders were ticket aspirants.

The Congress picked former BMTC chairperson M Nagaraju Yadav (an OBC candidate) and ex-MLC K Abdul Jabbar (a Muslim) as its candidates, prompting Reddy to go public with her disappointment.

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“There’s an excuse every single time. When we ask for an MLA ticket, excuses are that we don’t have resources and winnability. For MLC tickets, the excuses are that an election is coming up and that a certain someone based should be chosen based on caste,” Reddy, who was recently appointed as party general secretary, said in a video.

After the June 3 polls, the Congress will not have a woman member in the Legislative Council.

“There are very few opportunities in the Congress for independent women,” Reddy said, adding that women account for 50% of the population.

“Tickets go to someone’s wife, widow, daughter, sister or relative. Such people don’t speak for women because they come from patriarchy,” she said, lamenting the state-of-affairs in the Congress.

“Even in local body polls, it’s always a wife, sister or daughter,” Reddy pointed out. “The reason that women aren’t reaching Assembly or Parliament despite a 50% reservation in local bodies is that men take the position as soon as the quotas change,” she said, calling it “injustice” for independent women.

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Along with Reddy, the party’s Mahila Congress president Pushpa Amarnath, outgoing MLC Veena Achaiah and former radio jockey Lavanya Ballal are said to have asked for tickets.

“Resolutions were passed in the recent Chintan Shivir. And, in just a week’s time, the party has defied the resolutions,” Reddy said. “What is the guarantee that women will get opportunities in the coming days?”

According to Reddy, women can work on an equal footing with men with the right opportunities.

“This is very disappointing,” she said. “I don’t know if this will be set right in the coming days.”